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Friday, June 8, 2007

Are Feminists for Life Really Feminists? Part Two

On Feminists for Life (FFL) and its invocation of suffragists on abortion:

In her Mother Jones article, Emily Bazelon is right on the mark that early feminists saw abortion as a sign and symptom of women's socially mandated powerlessness. They also saw it as an unjust violence against unborn children's lives.

Although some people today certainly oppose abortion for despicable, hypocritical, decidedly not "prolife" reasons of wanting to control women: some of us oppose it for an updated, evolving version of this pioneering analysis.

The founders of the Nonviolent Choice Directory & Blog have thoroughly researched and documented this early feminist history and its continuing relevance in the book ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition, and elsewhere.

And for the most part, FFL's invocation of suffragists is grounded in this research. Contrary to Bazelon's assertions, it is not "context-free" nor irrelevant to present-day issues.

And what is the source of Bazelon's belief that early feminists opposed abortion because they "feared it would blur the line between a 'fallen woman' and a 'lady'"?

Contrary to the stereotype that they were prudes, early feminists of diverse kinds were determined not merely to blur but dismantle that line. They thoroughly exposed and challenged the sexual double standard that harmed and stunted all women (and still does!) by harshly separating out the purportedly "good" from the purportedly "bad" women and covering over the complicity and responsibility of social institutions in women's unjust, preventable sufferings.

This resistance to the double standard figured enoromously and continuously in their words and deeds of resistance to abortion. As the book also documents, in reprints of their own profuse writings.